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Account-based marketing (ABM) offers B2B marketers the power to laser focus on high-value accounts and deliver personalized experiences that drive sales.
While the challenges—scaled personalization, go-to-market team alignment, and analytics—are real, so is the payoff: higher ROI and stronger client relationships than traditional marketing. Both of which will set your business up for long-term success.
In this guide, we’ll unpack the what, why and how of ABM, spotlight its benefits and show you how you can go to market with ease using Userled’s ABM tools.
Overview of B2B Account-Based Marketing
ABM flips traditional marketing on its head by focusing on quality over quantity. It works best for companies with longer sales cycles or complex decision-making processes, where building relationships with specific contacts can make or break a deal.
With the focus squarely on delivering value where it matters most (through custom messaging on personalized B2B websites or account-specific campaigns, for example), ABM ensures you’re always one step ahead in meeting client expectations.
Types of B2B Account-Based Marketing
Whether it’s hyper-focused or broad-based, there’s an ABM strategy that can help you reach your business objectives. Let’s break down a few of the most popular.
One-to-One ABM
One-to-one ABM encourages you to craft custom experiences that make each touchpoint feel personal for each key account. It’s perfect if you’re targeting a small group of high-value accounts where each interaction needs to be spot on to push the deal forward.
One-to-Few ABM
One-to-few ABM lets you focus on a small cluster of high-value accounts with shared goals, needs and pain points. In industry-based campaigns, for example, you would target similar companies (in terms of sector, region, or size) or contacts (in terms of role or persona). If you’ve got a niche market and want to personalize your outreach for multiple clients at once, this approach is your sweet spot because it allows you to scale without losing the personal touch.
One-to-Many ABM
One-to-many ABM helps you connect with a larger group of accounts that share similar needs. This approach encourages messaging that feels personal, but without the heavy lifting of one-to-one. If you’re looking to reach more people while keeping your comms relevant to all of them, one-to-many ABM will do the trick.
Components of B2B ABM
The first step in B2B ABM is figuring out exactly which accounts you want to target, then segment and tier them. From there, it’s time to get creative and personalize your strategy to make each prospect feel like they’re your top priority. Once you’ve got that done, you can focus on converting them into loyal partners and keeping them around for the long haul.
Benefits of B2B Account Based Marketing
From driving better ROI to nurturing lasting relationships, there are loads of reasons for incorporating ABM into your broader marketing strategy. Not quite convinced? Let’s take a closer look at some of the top ABM benefits.
Higher Conversion Rates
ABM works because it helps you to zeroe in on the right accounts. Instead of sending a general message to everyone, you're tailoring your communications for a select group. This gives you the chance to truly connect with your best prospects, which increases conversions.
Think of it this way: instead of trying to catch everyone's attention with a generic pitch, you’re getting personal with the ones who matter most. You’re speaking directly to their specific needs, challenges, and goals, making your outreach feel more meaningful and relevant.
According to McKinsey, companies that implement personalization strategies see an average revenue increase of 10% to 15%.
With ABM, you’re putting your energy where it matters most. And that’s what drives real, measurable results.
Better Client Relationships
To tailor your message effectively, you need to get to know your target accounts’ unique needs, challenges and goals. This gives you the ability to spotlight your most relevant product benefits and make your interactions feel more meaningful.
It’s about building a relationship where your clients know you’ve got their back. The more you understand your target accounts, the stronger the connection you can build—and that’s the secret to lasting business partnerships.
That said, make sure you’re:
- connecting and interacting with prospects on socials
- following company updates via socials and press releases
- identifying valuable insights to follow up with
Increased ROI
In a survey of B2B businesses, 59% noted that ABM drove at least a moderate ROI and 21% said that that ROI was “strong.”
ABM gives you better ROI because it forces you to be intentional. Rather than wasting time and resources marketing to everyone, you're focusing on accounts that are more likely to convert.
Although researching accounts and personalizing content for them takes time, it’s a smart investment. Doing this increases your chances of making a sale and ultimately seeing a much higher return on your marketing efforts.
Shorter Sales Cycles
ABM helps shorten sales cycles by warming up your leads before they even enter the sales funnel. Since you’re creating personalized, targeted content for key accounts, your contacts are already familiar with your brand and what you offer.
By the time these contacts are ready to engage, they already know what you do, how you can solve their problems and why they should choose you. As a result, they’re much further down the funnel, reducing the time and effort required to close the deal.
Improved Customer Retention
We’ve already shown how ABM can help you to create better client relationships. That has another benefit: increasing your customer retention rates and lifetime value.
The personal touch that ABM requires keeps clients from feeling like just another line item in your CRM, making them more likely to stick around and keep doing business with you.
In fact, McKinsey found that 78% of customers who convert will make another purchase from a brand that personalizes its content to them and the same portion will recommend its product or services.
Resource Efficiency
Instead of trying to appeal to everyone and hoping some of it works, ABM makes you focus on the accounts you want to win.
This lets you double down on a smaller, more targeted group and focus your resources more efficiently, creating customer experiences that actually connect with your contacts through tailored content, custom outreach and more personal touchpoints.
Less is more here: targeting fewer accounts with a more meaningful approach will get you closer to conversion without blowing through your budget.
Traditional Marketing Challenges Solved by B2B ABM
We all know traditional marketing has its flaws. Here’s how B2B ABM can solve those problems to help you win more business:
- Unqualified leads: By targeting high-potential accounts, ABM filters out leads that are unlikely to want or need your product.
- Lost contacts: ABM aligns sales and marketing teams, helping to ensure contacts don’t slip through the cracks.
- Lack of personal connection: ABM reduces the risk of losing accounts by encouraging stronger relationships through personalized outreach.
- Unused data: Identifying the right accounts and understanding their needs requires data and ABM enables you to make use of that data.
- Wasted marketing efforts: With ABM, marketing teams are much less likely to sink time and effort into pursuing accounts that don’t convert.
Best Practices for Developing a B2B Account-Based Marketing Strategy
To make your B2B ABM strategy truly shine, make sure to follow these best practices. They’ll help you fine-tune your approach and drive better results across the board.
Use ABM Tech From the Beginning
The technology you use to support your ABM efforts can make all the difference. A solid platform lets you pinpoint your target accounts, personalize outreach and analyze data to track how well your efforts are landing.
Userled empowers you to manage all aspects of ABM in one place—from segmentation and content personalization to performance tracking. With this kind of streamlined process, you’re able to focus more on building genuine relationships with your prospects, while the platform handles the details that’ll lead to success.
Track Your Prospects
Tracking your prospects gives you insight into where they’re finding out about your business, what interests them and how close they are to making a decision.
With this information, you can adjust your approach and focus on the prospects that are the most important to you, saving time and resources in the process. The more you track, the clearer your path becomes to building strong relationships and closing deals.
Here’s some B2B marketing analytics data to keep an eye on:
- Engagement: Website activity, social media interactions and content consumption
- Source: Email, search, referral, etc
- Actions: Activities they’ve completed; e.g. downloads, form submissions and demo requests
- Buyer intent: How far along they are in your traditional sales or marketing funnel
- Conversion milestones: The number of actions they’ve performed taking them closer to a sale
Nurture Your Target Accounts
Not every lead is ready to make a purchase right away. And that's okay. The key is to stay connected and nurture them over time.
Providing valuable content and insights helps you to stay top of mind and can mean that your brand will be their first choice when the time comes for them to make a decision. It’s all about laying the groundwork now for future conversions, even if the sale doesn’t happen immediately.
Invest in Key Accounts After They’ve Converted
The work doesn’t stop once a client has converted. In fact, you might see this as just the beginning of your relationship.
Continually investing time and resources into your existing clients helps keep them satisfied and engaged. Regular check-ins, personalized offers and valuable insights make them feel appreciated and connected to your brand.
In addition, co-create content with partners and customers and involve them in your strategic efforts, and invite prospects to events that your company hosts or sponsors to nurture that relationship. All these efforts will help you not only retain business but also open doors for upsells, referrals and long-term loyalty.
Steps to Creating B2B Account-Based Marketing Strategies
It’s all good and well to understand the benefits that ABM can bring your business, but how do you implement it? Follow these steps to build an ABM strategy that’s tailored to your goals and guaranteed to drive better results.
Invest in Building Brand Awareness
If prospects have already heard of you, they’re more likely to be interested when you come knocking. This means that getting your brand name out there is super important if you want your ABM efforts to work.
The goal here is to build recognition and trust so your outreach doesn’t feel like it’s coming out of nowhere. When you lay this groundwork, you’re more likely to kick off conversations on the right foot and create a solid foundation for lasting relationships.
So, spend some time (and some money) building your brand presence early on. Relationships with subject matter experts and customers that are well-known in their industry will help you speed up the process of connecting with the right people and increasing brand visibility while distributing valuable content.
For example, you could launch a webinar series featuring well-known industry experts to both produce helpful content and increase the chances of prospects coming across your brand. Then, when it’s time to engage, you’ll likely find that your target accounts are more open to listening.
Use Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is one of the best ways of getting your foot in the door with target accounts. Whether it’s a blog post, videos or email newsletters, inbound marketing helps to get your name out there, creating a sense of familiarity and trust, and setting the stage for more successful conversations.
This ensures you’re not starting from scratch with your ABM efforts, but rather, you’re reaching out to prospects who already have some knowledge of your brand.
Educate Your Target Accounts
The best way to get your target accounts on board is by teaching them about your brand and what you do. When you educate your prospects, you build trust and familiarity, making it easier for them to move through the sales funnel and, eventually, convert.
Share content that’s relevant to their needs and challenges, like blog posts, case studies, or even webinars. Show them that you’re the solution they’ve been looking for—before you even make that pitch.
Implement ABM
Once you’re sure that you’ve got some brand recognition in your market, you can start putting ABM principles into practice. Here’s how to develop a solid ABM strategy.
- Create an ideal customer profile (ICP) to help you understand exactly who your perfect customer is.
- Identify high-value accounts that will deliver the greatest ROI for your business.
- Identify pain points that these target accounts have and figure out how you can solve them.
- Create demand for your product to generate interest.
- Customize your strategy and tailor your messaging for each account.
- Identify the best channels to use to reach your targets and meet them where they are.
- Launch your campaign and start contacting stakeholders at your key accounts.
- Analyze your performance with ABM analytics to see what’s working and tweak as needed.
Companies usually implement campaigns in this order:
- 1:many—while refining their ICP and messaging, you should seek to solve a pain point for a specific persona
- 1:few—with clearer use cases and similar companies as existing customers, you’re able to identify industries and segments and target those more closely
- 1:1—with more existing customers, you can identify those with the largest annual contract value and handpick those you’d like to engage
Userled for B2B Account-Based Marketing
B2B businesses have plenty to gain from implementing ABM, but executing it effectively requires a well-thought-out strategy and the right tools.
Userled is a comprehensive content personalization and analytics platform that’s designed to support your ABM efforts from start to finish.
Whether you’re targeting accounts or creating personalized content, our platform will help to make sure you're always on track. Plus, our intuitive dashboard and detailed analytics make it easy to track results and make data-driven decisions every step of the way.
With Userled, you can focus on what matters most in account-based marketing: building lasting relationships with customers who will continue to buy from your business. Find out how Userled can support your ABM strategy. Book a demo today.
Author
Generated £1.3M pipeline by focusing on UTM parameters personalisation.
Generated £1.3M pipeline by focusing on UTM parameters personalisation.
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